Through the Checkpoints

Evidence is emerging that more than 32 hostage-takers were involved in the Beslan school siege. Vasily K., a member of a Southern Federal District spetsnaz commando unit who participated in the storming of Beslan's School No. 1 on September 3, has told the Komsomolskaya Pravda newspaper that he personally counted 52 militants at the end of the operation – 49 dead and three captured alive. The Jamestown Foundation has a report on Vasily K.'s statement, and also on other aspects of the siege:

He claimed that among those captured were not only Nur-Pashi Kulaev, whom the authorities presented on television shortly after the raid as the single captured terrorist, but also Vladimir Khodov, a North Ossetian officially reported to have been killed in the storming, and a female suicide bomber. "I saw how they interrogated Khodov," Vasily K. said, adding that at one point Khodov "pulled out a 50-ruble note and said, ‘With this piece of paper I passed through all the checkpoints and with the help of it, I will get out of prison in two years and again kill for cash.' Throughout the whole interrogation he was insolent and self-assured. On the evening of September 4 they took him to Moscow; what's happening with him now, I don't know."

Vasily K. claimed that the authorities are hiding the fact that Khodov is alive because he was one of the hostage seizure's main organizers and is close to Chechen rebel warlord Shamil Basaev. The commando also said that the raid was not, as the Prosecutor General's Office alleged, led by Ruslan Khuchbarov, known as the "Colonel," but by Magomed Evloev, an ethnic Ingush known as "Magas" who is Basaev's personal bodyguard. Khuchbarov, he said, was Evloev's right-hand man. "On the photograph of the dead Evloev is visible a braid with an Arabic character that testifies to the fact that he belongs to the clan of ‘brigade' commanders," Vasily K. told Komsomolskaya pravda.

As indirect evidence that there were more than 32 hostage-takers, Vasily K. said that 47 automatic rifles were seized in the school along with three grenade launchers and other weapons. He also claimed that some 15 terrorists arrived in Beslan four days before seizure: "Police received numerous calls about suspicious looking people, but no measures were taken." Vasily K. claimed that there were four female suicide bombers among the terrorists, three of whom managed to escape, as well as a Beslan resident, who was an ethnic Ossetian.

There are also unanswered questions about the real number of hostages, and about the identity of some of the dead terrorists:

Earlier this month, Versiya quoted an unnamed employee of a morgue in Vladikavkaz, North Ossetia, as saying that the morgue had issued 648 death certificates. The weekly newspaper said that people in Beslan believed the true number of deaths to be "around a thousand." According to the Prosecutor General's office, 330 people were killed, including 172 children.

Meanwhile, Vremya novostei reported on November 3 that investigators had identified among the dead Beslan terrorists the body of Bashir Pliev, a former senior officer with the Ingushetian Interior Ministry's internal affairs department, who has been on the wanted list for involvement in the June insurgent raids on law-enforcement installations in Ingushetia. According to the paper, investigators believe Pliev chauffeured Shamil Basaev and fellow Chechen rebel field commander Doku Umarov into Ingushetia for that operation.